The Broken (2008)

Starring: Lena Headey, Ulrich Thomsen

Director: Sean Ellis

Review of the movie “The Broken”, by Bob Davodian

In all truthfulness, I did think the movie was slow to start. Now, I don’t mean that there needs to be action right off the bat but perhaps if there is an interim in a movie, it can be used more judiciously. In this case, perhaps building up the characters a little bit more. Having said that, I think the movie was entertaining. The soundtrack was phenomenal. Eerie, avant-garde soundscapes with textures of scary sounds using a real orchestra. It was dynamic and complimentary to the visuals. I was further curious as to what some of the movie “community” thought out there about this movie so I went over to rottentomatoes.com to read reviews after I watched the movie. To my dismay, it had a 31% at the time of writing this review. 31%???? I mean, really?? I couldn’t wrap my head around it. But now here’s the tricky part. The reason why I couldn’t wrap my head around the percentage is because it seems that the substance and meaning that I found in this movie apparently was not found by others. Now everybody is entitled to their opinion but I think it’s dangerous territory to give an opinion on something that wasn’t fully understood.  I say this because the most prevalent criticism I noticed throughout the web was that “it all led to nothing”; that the ending was a confusing let down, etc. I beg to differ. It was a massive ending, however, just subtle and without ebullition. And I don’t think every movie or ending needs to be explosive!  If one pays attention, one will find it shocking. My synopsis:

The main focus of the movie was based on 3 major points to keep in mind focused on an allegory which is best illustrated by the Edgar Allen Poe quote they show at the start of the film.

1. The “mirror people” were a demonic metaphor of the dreadful and miserable type of person that any individual is capable of exuding or being thus killing any semblance of a happy version of oneself. Again we see here the relative quality of the Poe quote shown in the beginning of the film. The coldness and detachment shown by these darker mirror doubles exemplifies the “evil demonic” version of the self even further! Not to mention that they set out to kill their “normal, good” doubles. This also is supported by the symbol of broken mirrors to represent the “dark” self; the broken self; the broken. And anytime there was a mirror shattered or broken in the film, you knew then the “evil demonic” self was lurking.

2. The mirror people were the focus as to who we were watching for most of the movie. That is, we were actually seeing the “evil, mirror Gina” struggling through most of the movie. The nice twist there is that the introduction of them all as “happy, jovial folk” celebrating their father’s birthday was meant to deceive the watcher into thinking that from the phone booth scene and on, we were still watching “happy, jovial Gina” as we saw her at the family dinner. This brings us to the 3^rd point.

3. Capgras Disorder. This was mentioned several times through out the movie mind you, and played a major role in the surprise ending. The car accident was incidental! It was just an x-factor thrown in to have the viewer believe that something was wrong with the “good Gina” we thought we were following throughout the movie. Where in fact, the “demonic Gina” figure was the one in the phone booth and the one that was confused as well as the one in the accident. At this point,” good Gina” was murdered by “evil Gina”. As part of Capgras also describes there is an aspect of delusional misidentification and the “demonic Gina” was experiencing that with herself! In turn, she consequently also behaved in a different manner than a cold and calculating “evil” figure. She behaved compassionately and with emotion. See it was apparent that we are shifting between the literal portrayals of ”demonic selves” (for example her boyfriend’s or family members’ “evil” versions breaking through the mirrors) for the sake of the horror element and also catching a glimpse of the duality an individual is capable of in a psychological sense once again (for example the father as he gets home is in a sullen and self pitying fashion toasting a Happy Birthday to himself). In essence, there’s of course only one Gina. It seems that the film offers a parable in the idea of one ”killing” themselves - as a metaphoric death – for “good” or for “bad”. This is an intellectual dark twist to this movie. In one sense, the viewer can ponder the conventional idea of “killing” oneself for a poorer, colder, and more detached version of oneself. In the other sense the fundamental idea that even “bad” can kill itself for “good” and be happy about it… just as we see in the end of this film, “demonic Gina” gains composure of herself. It actually took the shocking discovery of the death of “good Gina” at the end of the film to bring her back to “demonic Gina”, ironically so. As we see her feeling good about death, being colder with her associate towards the end, and being piercing and terrifying towards her own brother. That my friends was the twist. This was indeed a horror film; a cerebral one at that.